Sir, – Political reform is always a worthwhile discussion – there are always things our system could do better. The question of the appropriate number of TDs in our country’s parliament (Editorials, March 25th) is a worthy one.
But there are trade-offs and political reform cannot happen piecemeal. We must look at the whole system: the role of councillors, of directly elected mayors, of the Seanad, of how Cabinet has seemingly unbridled power, the centralisation of virtually all financial affairs around the Taoiseach’s approval, etc. Constitutional reforms of our political system shouldn’t be viewed in isolation, but as part of an interconnected and interdependent system.
The constitutional provision for the number of TDs proportional to population, Article 16 in De Valera’s 1937 Constitution, was inherited from the 1922 Free State constitution in its Article 26. It is and was a British-Empire-approved invention to have a TD for every 30,000 heads. And its effects beyond the number of TDs in the chamber are clear: our political discourse is more parochial than nationally minded and the jobs of TDs are disproportionately taken up with constituency issues compared with our European or international parliamentary counterparts. Questions of political reform themselves are rare in our public debate, unlike, for example, the questions of inclusive voting franchise in the United States.
Since 1922, there has been some academic progress on the question of balancing adequate representation with efficiency of parliaments. In 1972, the Estonian political scientist Rein Taagepera suggested a “cube-root law” – that the number of parliamentarians in a lower house should equal the cube root of the population.
RM Block
The law was revised by subsequent academics, and as recently as 2021, a more sophisticated equation was developed suggesting an altered square-root law.
To put that in context, using Ireland’s 2022 census data and estimations of actual voter turnout from UCD, these academics would postulate that Ireland’s current number of TDs should be between 66 (a reduction of nearly two-thirds and making cabinets much smaller by implication) and 189 (an addition of 17). But that came with a qualification – this mathematics can’t tell us what’s “ideal”, rather just what’s “typical” in other parliamentary democracies.
Perhaps using secondary-school mathematics or being more thoughtful about what we want from our politicians instead of a capped number of TDs in determining our political representation is a step too far for our political system. Perhaps that’s part of the problem in the first place. – Yours, etc,
Eoin Hayes,
TD for Dublin Bay South,
Social Democrats.
Sir, – Ireland has 15 senior Ministers, 23 junior Ministers, innumerable political advisers, a Government scientific adviser and more than 3,000 employees in the Department of Agriculture, yet I read in Saturday’s paper (March 28th) that there may only be enough fertiliser in the country to supply farmers until the end of April. How is this possible?
It confirms my opinion that there is no capability for planning or strategic analysis in this country. We are paying the price in many areas. – Yours, etc,
Michael Fitzgibbon,
Donnybrook,
Dublin 4.
